In an attempt to learn more about FREE online genealogical resources, I picked up the latest Family Tree Magazine, which lists 101 Best Free Websites for Tracing Your Roots. The list is divided into regional sections and different genealogical resources. Some are clear: Rootsweb, USGenWeb, for example; sites I already use profusely. I might get around to writing a review of those sites one of these days.
For now, I'm exploring (and registering) with sites I've never seen visited before.
This is not a full review. Please do not treat it as such. These are simply MY opinions, upon first visiting the sites.
We Relate
Taken from the website: "WeRelate is a free public-service wiki for genealogy sponsored by the Foundation for On-Line Genealogy in partnership with the Allen County Public Library. It is the world's largest genealogy wiki with pages for over 1,800,000 people and growing. WeRelate is currently in beta. It is supported by volunteers and your tax-deductible donations."
On first glance, this appears to be an invaluable genealogical resource. I created my account, Thefamilyorchard (as always) and ran a few simple searches.
LOOPS, is always the first (as it is MY surname, and often one that does not have a lot of information).
Immediately came 2 results: both pertaining to Frederick Loops (who remains "unknown" to most of the world) and his marriage to Kate Cromartie. This was from a gedcom uploaded from "dougcouch" who is "watching" his submissions. Apparently this means, IF I make changes to his uploaded information, he will be sent an email clarifying that thefamilyorchard made an update to his page.
Essentially, we are working together on the same tree.
Immediately, I love this idea. We are working together, to fulfill one online tree. I was able to click on "unknown Loops" and change the information to Frederick, his vital information, and his parents. This is Great!
I will need to play around with this site in great detail when I have more time, to see how this unification of ONE online tree really works. Because you can upload your own gedcom, I'm not confident how duplicates are removed - is that even possible? A quick search into LOVEALL proved there are many duplicates. So.... I'm not encouraged.
Another difficulty is that the available upload is only 5,000 people. I don't know about you, but I have 20K more than 5,ooo people in my database. I'll have to find a solution to this - perhaps uploading multiple gedcoms for individual families?
All in all, I'm off to a great start playing with We Relate. We will see how it continues and I will certainly keep you updated on my experience as it unfolds.
